Overcoming human trafficking via operations research and analytics: Opportunities for methods, models, and applications

Human trafficking is a complex transnational problem for society and the global economy. While researchers have studied this topic in a variety of contexts, including the criminology, sociology, and clinical domains, there has been little coverage in the operations research (OR) and analytics community. This paper highlights how techniques from OR and analytics can address the growing issue of human trafficking. We describe some of the unique concerns, problems, and challenges of human trafficking in relation to analytical techniques; subsequently, we demonstrate a variety of ways that OR and analytics can be applied in the human trafficking domain.